1. Technical Field
The disclosed subject matter relates generally to implantable medical devices and more particularly to integrating implantable medical device data from various programmer databases for an accurate history of programming for the implantable medical device.
2. Background Information
Various diseases and disorders of the nervous system are associated with abnormal neural discharge patterns. One treatment regimen for such diseases and disorders is drug therapy. Another treatment technique is implantation in the patient of an implantable medical device (IMD) that comprises an electrical signal generator for applying an electrical signal to a target location of the patient's neural tissue. In one such available treatment for epilepsy, an electrical signal is applied to the vagus nerve by a neurostimulator device substantially as described in one or more of U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,702,254, 4,867,164, and 5,025,807, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Some implantable electrical signal generators used for electrical stimulation of neurological tissue operate according to a therapy algorithm programmed into the device by a health care provider such as a physician. The therapy regimen provided to a patient may subsequently be changed by altering one or more therapy parameters defining the electrical signal by reprogramming the neurostimulator after implantation by transcutaneous communication between an external programmer device (EPD) and the implanted neurostimulator. In addition to reprogramming of one or more electrical signal parameters, in some devices the actual software running on the device may be changed to permit significantly or totally different therapy algorithms. The ability to program (and later re-program) the IMD and/or change the software permits a health care provider to customize the therapy provided by the implanted device to the patient's needs, to update the therapy periodically should those needs change, and to update the software of the device, including the operating system, to provide improved therapies on an ongoing basis.
The external programmer device noted above is used to program the IMD to specify different therapeutic algorithms and/or diagnostic routines, and to interrogate the IMD to obtain therapeutic or diagnostic information. A particular patient's IMD may, in the course of treatment, be programmed by a plurality of EPDs. For example, when a physician's office has multiple EPDs, one for each examination room, or when additional physicians consult on a single patient and each physician has his own programmer device, the patient's IMD may be interrogated and/or reprogrammed by any number of EPDs. Each EPD maintains a database locally (i.e., internal to the EDP) of the programming and interrogation information sent to or retrieved from each IMD with which the programmer interacts. Thus, the programming “history” of a single IMD may become distributed across multiple EPDs. The database of a single EPD may be considered comprehensive from the perspective of that particular EPD, however, because an IMD may be programmed or interrogated by multiple EPDs, there is not a single, comprehensive database with respect to a particular patient's IMD. Accordingly, determining the programming history for a particular patient may be difficult, if not impossible.